Free Never Kiss a Stranger by Winter Renshaw

also my boss.”
    I lowered my head, faux face-palming. No one had ever accused Tammy Lynn Andrews of having a lick of common sense when it came to her choices in men.

 
     
     
     

     

    “I knew you’d come around,” I said as the host escorted Addison to the table. The fresh coat of lipstick and the faint breeze of flowers that floated off her body told me she’d freshened up before coming.
    It’d taken most of the afternoon and a few back and forth phone calls, but I’d eventually convinced her to meet me for dinner.
    “Kind of nice to relinquish control outside of the bedroom, isn’t it?” I whispered as I leaned across the table.
    When I looked into her pretty blue eyes, I saw a tightly wound woman with scars as deep as the ocean. I fully intended to peel back her layers one by one and get to the heart of who she really was.
    I wanted to know what made her tick. And it wasn’t because she was pretty or a good lay. Meeting Addison was like cracking open an oyster and finding an enormous pearl. For the vast majority of my twenties, the oysters I’d cracked had been empty.
    Maybe I didn’t deserve her, and I sure as hell didn’t know what to do with her, but I’d found her. What was that saying? Finders, keepers?
    “This looks like a date, Wilder.” Her lips turned down at the corners as she feigned disappointment. I only knew she was faking it because the flickering candle between us threw soft shadows on her face, illuminating the fact that her eyes were all lit up.
    “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” I cleared my throat.
    Her eyes widened. “Um, okay?”
    “Will you… will you be…” I purposely drug it out to torture her. “My friend?”
    She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. And when she lifted her gaze to meet mine, she was grinning. “You scared me.”
    “Can we be friends?” I was completely serious. “I want to call you my friend.”
    “You’re falling for me.” She cocked her head to the side. “I knew this would happen.”
    “I’m not falling for you,” I lied.
    “I’m in love with my job, Wilder,” she said, speaking about it as if it were a living, breathing entity and I was just a torrid affair.
    The server approached, cutting our conversation off and taking our orders. We spent the rest of the dinner making small talk, with Addison making concerted efforts to avoid speaking about anything remotely personal, and we headed outside the moment I’d paid the check.
    “Thanks for dinner… friend .” She poked her finger into my chest. Her pretty lips opened wide into a yawn. “You wore me out last night. I need to go home and go to bed.”
    “It’s only eight o’clock,” I objected. “The night’s young… friend .”
    I reached for her arm, but she yanked it away before I had a chance to pull her in. “Not tonight.”
    She stepped toward the curb as a Yellow Cab approached, flagging her arm high in the air. The cab came to a screeching halt and she tugged the door open, turning to me to wave goodbye.
    Something came over me in that moment, and I found myself climbing into the cab alongside her.
    “What are you doing?” she asked with a bewildered look in her eyes.
    I gave my address to the cabbie and pulled Addison onto my lap, my hands finding her mouth in the dark of the backseat as city lights played across the side of her face like a movie scene. Pulling her face to mine, I kissed her like I meant it.
    “I’m taking you home with me tonight.”
    * * *
    No woman I’d been involved with in the last few years had set foot in my apartment. Not since Nikki. My space was sacred. And bringing girls home usually gave them the wrong impression, anyway.
    “Nice,” she said as we rode the elevator to my penthouse. I’d purchased it after I made my first ten million, one year after my mom passed. “This is beautiful.” She kicked off her candy-apple-colored heels and toed across the room to the slider that went to the